My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleycontinuing athletic capacity a first-rate mind; these gifts may succeed each other butthey rarely coincide.He was serving on the staff when I first met him, having ceased to fly before the warafter witnessing the death-crash of his great friend, Charles Rolls. Apart from apleasant interlude towards the end of the war, the next time I was to have a glimpse ofhim in effective action was in Parliament soon after my arrival. His immenseexperience and authority in aviation fitted him perfectly to be Parliamentary PrivateSecretary to Mr. Churchill when he became Air Minister. Ivan Moore-Brabazon wasnever a character who sustained easily the restrictive chains of office. During an airdebate Mr. Churchill sought a little respite in the smoking-room, and engaged inconversation the circle in which I was sitting. Soon a Whip hurried in and said to him,'You had better come back to the House, your P.P.S. is up and he is knocking hell outof the Ministry'. The exit from the smoking-room was portentous.At the end of 1914 the work of the squadron was regular and arduous, and after thefirst trial flight along the lines I was launched straight into it. We did a reconnaissanceat least once a day, and it usually took nearly three hours. It was normally a shallowreconnaissance over Courtrai to observe troop concentrations near the front line, butquite frequently we did a reconnaissance in depth which took us about seventy milesbehind the German lines to observe their forces coming up. This further flight wasmuch preferred to the observation sweep of about twenty miles behind the lines, andwas regarded as quite a relief from the more exacting daily routine. The reason wasthat once you got through the first twenty miles you enjoyed relative tranquillity untilreaching any of the main towns farther back, where they were again waiting withheavy fire.The daily reconnaissance at short distance was a different matter. Their fire begandirectly the machine crossed the lines and did not let up for a moment during thewhole flight until the line was recrossed to return home. The German method was toput guns in squares, with eight in each corner. Directly the aircraft was about thecentre of the square they would open fire simultaneously, with cross-observation bytelephone from each corner to the other corners with the usual gunners' information.The result was that thirty-two shells would be in the air at the first salvo, and theywould continue firing at almost the rate of the French '75's, which then operated atgreater speed than any other guns in the world. The moment we were out of onesquare we were into another, and so it continued throughout the convivial three hours.It is therefore not difficult to understand why our aircraft hardly ever crossed the lineswithout being hit.The whole danger at that time was from ground-fire, as the fighting between machineshad only just begun in a very rudimentary form. But the effect of the fire on aircraftwhich were flying at seventy to eighty miles an hour at a height of not more than6,000 feet was naturally considerable. We were flying at that time BE2Cs, which wereslow but reliable. They took off, flew and landed at about the same speed. No pilotcould coax them much above their 6,ooo-feet ceiling. I was attached at one time toanother flight using Morris Farman Shorthorns, the machines on which we used tolearn to fly in those days. These machines were just as slow and even more clumsy,but popular with us at that time because they could reach a height of 12,000 feet. Thisby no means rendered them invulnerable to ground-fire, but at that height it was much46 of 424